8 /10 1 Votes8
Running time 77 minutes Director Thor Heyerdahl Producer Thor Heyerdahl | 8/10 IMDb Starring Thor Heyerdahl Initial release 13 January 1950 Music director Sune Waldimir | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Release date 13 January 1950 (1950-01-13) (Sweden)13 February 1950 (1950-02-13) (Norway) Awards Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature Nominations BAFTA Award for Best Documentary Similar Windjammer, Deep Water, Here Is Always Somewh, Crashing the Water Barrier, The Secret Land |
Kon-Tiki is a Norwegian-Swedish documentary film about the Kon-Tiki expedition led by Norwegian explorer and writer Thor Heyerdahl in 1947, released in Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Denmark in 1950, followed by the United States in 1951. The movie, which was directed by Thor Heyerdahl and edited by Olle Nordemar, received the Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature for 1951 at the 24th Academy Awards. The Oscar officially went to Olle Nordemar. It is currently the only feature film from Norway to have won an Academy Award.
The Academy Film Archive preserved Kon-Tiki in 2013.
Content
The movie has an introduction explaining Heyerdahl's theory, then shows diagrams and images explaining the building of the raft and its launch from Peru. Thereafter it is a film of the crew on board, shot by themselves, with commentary written by Heyerdahl and translated. The whole film is black and white, shot on a single 16mm camera.
A small amount of color footage of Kon-Tiki does exist.